The Unusual Muggles
by Dov5e
Summary: Dumbledore calls the Order...to read? Listen along as Harry Potter and company learn about a world they never knew exsisted. READ AND I WILL GIVE YOU A VIRTUAL MUFFIN!
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:So this is one of those "reading the books" thingys except its just reading Percy Jackson because I feel like it. Might be a while between updates….but I'll try my hardest. Enjoy!**

**I DON'T OWN PERCY JACKSON AND HARRY POTTER. PERIOD.**

Chapter 1

Albus Dumbledore was nervous. More nervous than he had felt in a while. Even with the war. He was about to merge two worlds that had previously been spinning independent of each other, unaware of the secret world that drifted beyond their own private life.

And he had no idea how they'd react. The others might have some idea of the wizards, but the wizards…..Albus was sure there would be accusations of lying, that he was crazy. That was why he'd start small. All those involved with the Order. Harry Potter and company included.

The other teacher with whom he had become acquainted had decided to would be easier of a transition to read the adventures of his star pupil, much like Harry. It would ease them into their world.

That was why he was here today. At number 12 Grimmauld place. To read the books that had been sent. He had already gathered some members of the Order, the Weasleys, and Harry. Even though it was the middle of summer, Albus didn't think he'd mind getting away from the Dursleys.

He scanned the room with calm indifference. Everyone had arrived and was still confused as to why they were here.

"Welcome."

Molly Weasley spoke up what everyone was already thinking. "Albus, why were we called here? We didn't have a meeting scheduled."

"You were called here today to read." He said simply.

Arthur and Kingsley gave him questioning looks and there was groans from the Weasley children and Harry. Hermione shushed them, before asking a question.

"Professor Dumbledore, You know as well as any that I enjoy reading," Ron rolled his eyes. "but I don't quite understand why it is so important."

Albus smiled kindly. "I'm glad you asked, Miss Granger. The books we will be reading today depict the life of a boy very similar to you Harry," He sent a pointed glance in his direction, "He and his colleagues will be helping us in the war. It is of the upmost importance that we understand his culture and civilization."

The room broke out into chatter.

Ron looked at him doubtfully, "I don't think many people have lives similar to Harry, Professor."

Albus smiled again. "I assure you, he has gone through similar events. Why, he is even subject to a famous prophecy."

Hermione listened in to their conversation. "Wouldn't we have heard of this before now, then?"

Albus shook his head. "I'm afraid it wouldn't be in most of our news."

Tonks leaned toward the end of the table. "Why?"

By now the entire table had quieted down and were listening.

"Why because they aren't of the wizarding world."

The room was shocked.

"We are getting help from _muggles_?" Sirius asked incredulously.

Albus mused this. "I wouldn't say muggles. Maybe very _usual_ muggles. Regular muggles don't know of them."

The table looked confused, and asked more questions at the same time, so it became a muddle of voices.

Albus put his hands up in a calming gesture, and the room fell silent.

"That is all I will tell you, I will let the books explain the rest. I'm afraid that is what I will leave you with, but I must go. Happy reading." And with a large CRACK! he was gone and in his place was a book.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Wooh! First real chapter up! Thank you for the reviews! They make my life smiley!**

**DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN EITHER AWESOME BOOK SERIES. **

Chapter 2

Harry glanced around the room. Tonks was arguing with Sirius over who would read the book. The book itself was a dark sea-green with nothing on the cover. It was about 5 centimeters thick. **(A/N: I'm American, not sure about metric units.)**

Harry was a bit disturbed that there was someone else out there with a life as terrible as his. He wouldn't wish this life upon anyone.

Tonks smiled brightly and Sirius grumbled in defeat. She pounded the table with her right fist to get everyone's attention, but it wasn't necessary. She gripped the book in her left hand and opened it to the first page.

The title is "The Lightning Thief." She announced.

Hermione frowned. "It isn't physically possible to capture lightning."

Ron shrugged. "Well he did say they were unusual." But it was tinged with doubt.

**Chapter 1 "I Accidentally Vaporize my Pre-Algebra Teacher," **

Sirius snickered, along with the Weasley Twins. "I don't know what pre-algebra is, but getting rid of any teacher is a plus."

Harry simply wondered if the main character actually killed someone, because he thoroughly disproved of that. Even though he may have to kill Voldemort in the future.

**Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.**

Harry frowned as she read this. "Why wouldn't you want to be a half-blood?"

"Dumbledore said they weren't wizards." Hermione pointed out.

"He also said they were 'unusual muggles.' Maybe they're half muggle." Suggested Mr. Weasley.

"Nothing wrong with that." Hermione said defensively. She was muggleborn and didn't like it when people (cough, Malfoy, cough) insulted her because of it.

**If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is:****close this book right now.**

Sirius frowned. "Why would we do that?"

Tonks glared at him. "Maybe it will tell us, if you stop _interrupting_."

Sirius grumbled but didn't say anything else.

**Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.**

Mrs. Weasley frowned disapprovingly at this. "What parent would lie to their children about their birth?"

"My aunt and uncle lied to me about my parents' death." Harry muttered under his breath. He really hated them.

**Being a half-blood is dangerous.**

Everyone frowned at this. "Do you think it's more dangerous than being a wizard?" Ginny asked.

Mr. Weasley looked down at his only daughter. "I don't know if you could consider being a wizard more dangerous than a regular muggle if you think about it. You-know-who wasn't always around."

Harry couldn't remember a time when he knew he was a wizard and wasn't worried about Voldemort.

**It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.**

"Oh." Hermione's voice was small.

"I guess that answers your question." Mr. Weasley said grimly.

Harry frowned. He wasn't liking this different culture so far.

**If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.**

Kingsley's brow furrowed. "That's not a good sign."

**But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. **

There was a pause where everyone checked to see if they felt anything stirring and then laughed nervously at the silliness of it.

**You might be one of us. **

Ron sighed, impatient. "Would you just tell us who 'us' is?"

Ginny giggled. "Ron, you realize you're speaking to a book."

Ron, in a fit of childishness, stuck his tongue out at his sister.

**And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before **_**they **_**sense it too, and they'll come for you.**

There was quiet. "Ominous."

**Don't say I didn't warn you.**

**My name is Percy Jackson.**

"We have a name!" George grinned triumphantly.

Harry had never heard of 'Percy Jackson' and a glance at Hermione told him she didn't either, and Hermione knew most anything.

**I'm twelve years old.**

Mrs. Weasley frowned again. "Only twelve?"

Harry expected this person to be older, for the dangerous life they were supposed to live. Then again, he was only twelve when he found out about the wizarding world.

**Until a **_**few **_**months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.**

Hermione looked thoughtfully at the book. "He's American."

"And 'troubled.'" Ron added.

Fred grinned at his twin. "Sounds like our kind of guy."

**Am I a troubled kid?**

**Yeah. You could say that.**

George grinned back. "Yes, definitely our kind of guy."

Ginny just rolled her eyes.

**I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.**

"What's Ancient Greek and Roman?" Ron asked.

Most of the table nodded in agreement with the question and turned to Hermione.

Hermione sighed exasperatingly. "It's an ancient muggle civilization. They believed in multiple gods, who controlled different elements of the Earth. Greek was the original culture and I think Roman was quite similar." She shrugged, embarrassed. "It was in fifth grade; I don't remember much."

Harry vaguely remembered some skinny stick-like teacher with orange hair droning on and on about the importance of a democratic government and Greek and Roman culture.

**I know—it sounds like torture.**

"No it doesn't!" Three guesses who said that.

**Most Yancy field trips were.**

**But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.**

"At least he tries." Hermione said, glaring at Ron and Harry, who looked innocently at the book.

**Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.**

"Or not." Hermione conceded.

**I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.**

"He must get in trouble often." Remus said with a thoughtful look, probably remembering his own adventures at Hogwarts.

**Boy, was I wrong.**

"Foreshadowing." Hermione pointed out.

**See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.**

The room burst out into spontaneous laughter.

**And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.**

"No, tell us more!" Sirius said and the twins pouted like he just took the words out of their mouths.

**This trip, I was determined to be good.**

"It never works." George said sadly.

"Do you even try?" Ginny asked sincerely.

"Well-" George began. "We plead the fifth!" **(no idea if there if a British equivalent.)** Fred butted in.

**All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover****in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.**

"That's disgusting." Tonks said.

"It in your hair or the sandwich itself?" Sirius asked.

Tonks faked gagged "Both."

**Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled.**

Harry hoped his friends didn't describe him like that.

**He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.**

"Strange."

"I don't think I've ever had an enchilada." Tonks stares off thoughtfully in the distance.

"What's it taste like?"

"I dunno, never had one either." Everyone looks around the room and realize no one has had an enchilada.

"Muggle food."

**Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.**

"Death by in-school suspension is terrible." Fred admitted.

"How would you know?" Ginny asked.

Both twins shuddered visibly. "You don't want to know."

**"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled.**

"Violent, much?" Ron joked.

**Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."**

**He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.**

Harry frowned. "He should stand up for himself more, otherwise he's just going to keep getting bullied."

**"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.**

"Come on Grover! We need some action." George said. Fred nodded in agreement.

Ginny gave them a dirty look while Mrs. Weasley reprimanded them loudly.

**"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."**

**Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there.****In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.**

"Foreshadowing again." Ron rolled his eyes.

**Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.**

**He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.**

"Pottery? Who cares about bloody _pottery_?" Ron asked.

Hermione glared at him. "It's from ancient times. Archeologists use it to determine what life was like 2,000 years ago. Imagine making something and it lasting for all those years." Her face had a dreamy look.

Ron just snorted. "So really old pottery."

Hermione glared at him again.

**It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.**

"See, Percy cares!"

Fred and George shook their heads. "Just when he was starting to sound interesting."

**He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a **_**stele, **_**for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.**

"I've gotten the evil eye loads of times."

"I bet I got it more!"

"No you didn't, I did!"

Everyone rolled their eyes at the twin's antics.

**Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.**

Ginny shivered. "I don't like the sound of her."

**From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.**

**One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, **

"Until midnight? She's crazy!" The twins yelped simultaneously. Which kind of creeped Harry out. How did they anticipate the other's decisions? It must be a twin thing, Harry thought.

**I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."**

Sirius, along with the rest of the table, looked confused. "Not human?"

"Maybe it has something to do with their culture?" Hermione theorized.

**Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.**

**Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you **_**shut up**_**?"**

"Good." Hermione stated and Remus nodded in agreement.

**It came out louder than I meant it to.**

**The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.**

**"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"**

"I wasn't his fault!" Harry defended Percy. For some reason, Harry could sympathize with Percy.

"No one said it was." Ron told him.

**My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."**

**Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?**

**I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"**

Mrs. Weasley looked horrified. "Eat their kids?" her tone slightly higher than normal.

**"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied.**

**"And he **_**did **_**this because ..."**

**"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god,**

**and—"**

**"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.**

**"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead.**

Ginny looked confused. "How do you confuse a rock with a baby?"

Fed shook his head. "No one knows."

**And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"**

Tonks, Ginnny, Hermione, and Mrs. Weasley looked disgusted, though they didn't voice it.

**"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.**

**"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."**

Everyone looked to Hermione for confirmation, but she just shrugged.

"I just remember the basic outline of it, not specific stories."

**Some snickers from the group. **

Remus looked confused. "Why?"

**Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"**

"She has a point." Ron said.

"It could be important in the future." Hermione argued. "Why else would they include it?"

Ron rolled his eyes. "Every single thing in the story doesn't have to be important.

**"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"**

**"Busted," Grover muttered.**

**"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.**

Harry imagined how disturbing that would look, then shuddered mentally, and tried to remove that thought from his brain.

**At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.**

"Like McGonagall." Fred and George pointed out.

**I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."**

**"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. **

This time, Ron's face was tinged with an unhealthy green. "That's bloody disgusting."

Ginny nodded in agreement.

**The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"**

**The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.**

Ginny stuck her nose in the air. "Boys are always doofuses." She said knowledgably.

"What about Harry then?" George asked, grinning at Ginny's bright red face.

"I haven't a clue what you're talking about."

"Suuure." Harry's face almost rivaled Ginny's.

Ron looked confused. "What are they going on about?"

"Nothing."

**Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."**

**I knew that was coming.**

"Don't you just hate it when they do that?" Fred asked. Sirius nodded.

**I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"**

**Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.**

"That reminds me of Dumbledore's eyes." Harry stated. Dumbledore's eyes were a bright blue that held a timeless look to them.

**"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.**

**"About the Titans?"**

**"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."**

**"Oh."**

"I don't see how it matters." Ron said. Hermione glared at him but refused to say anything to him.

**"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."**

"Why him? And how is it vitally important?" No one answered Ron's question.

**I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.**

**I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever **_**lived, **_**and their mother, and what god they worshipped.**

"That sounds like fun!" Hermione's eyes were gleaming.

"Typical Hermione." Ron muttered to Harry.

**But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life. **

"What's attention deficit disorder and dyslexia?" Ginny asked curiously.

"ADD or attention deficit disorder is a disease muggles are born with that makes them inattentive and unable to most group work and aren't good at school. Dyslexia is another inborn disease in which their brain can't comprehend the letters of words and moves them around. Basically he has a hard time reading and spelling, and school in general."

**No—he didn't expect me to be **_**as good; **_**he expected me to be **_**better. **_**And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.**

"See." Hermione said.

**I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.**

**He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.**

**The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.**

**Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas.**

"I don't think global warming causes massive storms." Ginny said.

**We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.**

"That's strange," Kingsley said slowly, as if thinking over reasons in his head.

**Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.**

**Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from **_**that **_**school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.**

Harry frowned. He felt bad for Percy. Harry, as a rule, tried to avoid being with the Dursleys as much as possible in public. And they did the same.

**"Detention?" Grover asked.**

**"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."**

**Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"**

Ron snorted. "Great friend."

**I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.**

**I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.**

Mrs. Weasley cooed, while George and Fred mouthed, "Momma's boy."

Harry sighed. He wished he had a chance to meet his mother.

**Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.**

**I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.**

"Gross." Ginny said and scrunched up her nose, which looked kind of cute; Harry noted then tried to abolish this thought.

**"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.**

"What are Cheetos?"

"Muggle food."

"Oh."

"Are they orange?"

Hermione gave Ron a look like _what do you _think_?_

**I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.**

"A wave?" Remus asked sounding confused.

**I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"**

"Go Percy!" George shouted while Mrs. Weasley gave them a reprimanding glare.

**Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.**

**Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"**

**"—the water—"**

**"—like it grabbed her—"**

"What?" Ron asked.

"Maybe it's part of their culture?" but even Hermione sounded doubtful.

**I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.**

**As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"**

**"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."**

"Don't ever do that! It just makes the punishment worse!"

**That wasn't the right thing to say.**

"No duh!"

**"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.**

**"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. **_**I **_**pushed her."**

Harry was surprised. Grover had been so submissive before.

**I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.**

Even Percy agreed.

**She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.**

**"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.**

**"But—"**

**"You—**_**will**_**—****stay—here."**

"Why does she want Grover to stay out of it so badly?" Tonks asked thoughtfully.

**Grover looked at me desperately.**

**"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."**

**"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "**_**Now**_**."**

Something about this just doesn't seem right.

**Nancy Bobofit smirked.**

**I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.**

"Why is it a stare, not a glare?" asked Ron.

"Who cares?" Hermione asked.

"It could be important to the story." Ron mimicked Hermione mockingly.

Hermione turned red, then glared at Ron.

**Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.**

**How'd she get there so fast?**

"Strange."

**I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.**

"See!" Hermione said again triumphantly.

**I wasn't so sure.**

"What?" Hermione frowned.

**I went after Mrs. Dodds.**

**Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.**

Why would Grover want Mr. Brunner to notice?

**I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.**

**Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.**

**But apparently that wasn't the plan.**

**I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.**

**Except for us, the gallery was empty.**

"Something doesn't seem right." Harry voiced his opinion.

**Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.**

Ginny shivered. "This doesn't sound good."

**Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...**

**"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.**

**I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."**

Fred and George nodded studiously. "That is always the safe thing to do when, you're dealing with a teacher : agree."

Harry couldn't seem to shake that bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

**She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"**

"Get away with what?" Tonks was confused.

**The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.**

The bad feeling only increased by a tenth fold.

**She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.**

Maybe so, thought Harry, thinking of some of the teachers he'd had in the past.

**I said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."**

**Thunder shook the building.**

The room fell silent. It was like they knew something was going to happen.

**"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."**

Everyone one exchanged confused glances, but they didn't break the silence.

What does Percy need to confess?

**I didn't know what she was talking about.**

**All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room.****Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on **_**Tom Sawyer **_**from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.**

That broke the mood somewhat, and we all laughed nervously.

**"Well?" she demanded.**

**"Ma'am, I don't..."**

**"Your time is up," she hissed.**

The room fell silent again.

**Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.**

"Bloody hell." Ron whispered and Mrs. Weasley didn't even scold him on language. We were all to shocked.

"Wotcher, he's in a pickle." Tonks said quietly.

"What _is_ that?" Harry said hoarsely. Harry never had to deal with anything like _that_.

"I have no idea." Remus whispered and motioned for Tonks to continue.

**Then things got even stranger.**

"What now?" Mr. Weasley asked.

**Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.**

"A pen? How is that supposed to help?" Mrs. Weasley didn't want to hear about the death of another child.

**"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.**

**Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.**

"Oh no." Percy was going to die. Life similar to Harry's? He hoped not. He didn't want to die. Harry reminded himself that the book was longer than 14 pages and cheered slightly at the thought. They couldn't let the main character die now.

**With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.**

"What?" That seemed to be the word of the day. A pen transforming into a sword?

**Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.**

**My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.**

That would not be good.

**She snarled, "Die, honey!"**

Fred laughed lightly and they all turned to stare at him incredulously.

"I just imagined her attacking a jar of honey." He giggled.

They stared at him like he was crazy, but Harry couldn't stop the corners of his mouth from tilting up, despite himself. The mental image was funny, if you thought about it.

**And she flew straight at me.**

All thoughts of honey-killing demons vanished from his mind and he turned serious once again.

**Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.**

"How is swinging a sword natural?"

**The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. **_**Hisss!**_

The table let out a visible sigh of relief.

**Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.**

Ron shuddered. "Creepy." Harry couldn't help but agree.

**I was alone.**

**There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.**

"Wait-what happened to the sword?"

**Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.**

"That would be disturbing."

"How so?"

"You might think you made up the whole thing."

**My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.**

**Had I imagined the whole thing?**

"See." Ron looked annoyed. He hated it when Hermione was right.

**I went back outside.**

**It had started to rain.**

**Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."**

The room was a mix of words, but they all said the same thing- "Who?"

**I said, "Who?"**

**"Our **_**teacher.**_**Duh!"**

"What?" Sirius was as confused as the rest of us.

**I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.**

**She just rolled her eyes and turned away.**

"That would be so weird."

**I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.**

**He said, "Who?"**

"Him too?" Harry asked. He'd thought it might have been an unfunny prank, but Grover wouldn't do that. At least from what he'd heard of him.

**But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.**

Or maybe not.

**"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."Thunder boomed overhead.**

"Anyone notice how he pays special attention to the weather?" Tonks asked.

Harry blinked and then realized that Percy mentioned thunder or storms on every other page.

**I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.**

**I went over to him.**

Kingsley nodded approvingly. "He'll know what's going on."

**He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."**

"What?" Mr. Brunner's in on it too?

**I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.**

**"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"**

**He stared at me blankly. "Who?"**

**"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."**

"It's like she was erased from everyone's memory." Hermione said. This was just getting creepy.

**He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"**

There was one word on everybody's mind. The most universal word used today.

What?

**A/N: That took FOREVER. I have off today, so that's the only reason I was able to get it done so soon. Don't expect it to come out overnight. Plus with midterms coming up….Please, Please, review.**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Enchantress Arodiel- sorry I suck at spelling, I'll be sure to change that.**

**SeanHicks4-no sorry I am not doing the pjo reads harry potter. I might, however do one in the future where Camp Jupiter reads the Lost Hero or where piper, leo, and Jason read the titan's curse. That's probably waaay in the future though….**

**A sky full of lighters- the title is more of their perception of the pjo band and partially what Dumbledore said. The next book will probably be named something different if I ever get there(fingers crossed!)**

**SeanHicks4(again): I think from the context they could assume it was food and go off from that that it was something they'd never heard of, but assumed everyone else knew what it was. Does that make any sense?**

**Thank you Everyone who reviewed! I love you all!**

Chapter 3

Sirius was the first to break from his stupor. "Well, we should probably continue with the story, I'm sure it will all be explained soon enough."

Harry frowned and wished 'soon enough' was now. A million questions ran through his head that he wanted answered. But Harry could Sirius was none too pleased with waiting, even though he had just told everyone it would probably be explained in the near future. Besides, the only way to answer his questions was to read more.

By now everyone was asking questions of each other that no one knew the answers to.

"What was that creature?"

"How did the pen turn into a sword?"

"Is he hallucinating?"

"What are enchiladas?"

"Why can't anyone remember Mrs. Dodds?"

And possibly the biggest one of all,

"What is Percy Jackson?"

Harry pounded the table to get their attention. The wooden boards shuddered and everyone turned their attention to him.

"Sirius is right. We can only find out if we continue reading. Who's next?"

Hermione raised her hand eagerly. Tonks mutely handed over the book, however pausing to shoot a smirk in the direction of Sirius. She knew he wanted to read. She liked to torment him. After all, what were cousins for?

Sirius scowled good-naturedly and nodded to Hermione to start reading. She had been watching the exchange in confusion, but now she just shook her head and flipped the book open to the correct page.

"**Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death,**

Hermione looked up at everyone's questioning gazes. "That's the chapter title."

"Socks of Death, how interesting." Sirius was trying to keep a straight face, but the corners of his mouth kept twitching up. Everyone started laughing at his expression.

Once everyone almost everybody had stopped laughing, Ron choked out, "I have an aunt who knits socks of death."

They all burst out laughing again at Ron's statement, except Mrs. Weasley who gave Ron a disapproving look, but it seemed she was holding back giggles herself.

"Aunt Florence!" George shouted out in recognition. "Knitting socks is all she ever does!" Fred cried out after his twin.

Everyone laughed even harder at this explanation.

After the table quieted down, Harry felt a pang in his chest at the happy moment. He was glad the war against Voldemort hadn't totally sapped their spirits.

Hermione cleared her voice for silence and proceeded with the chapter.

**I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly.**

**This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. **

Harry recalled his explanation last chapter, and agreed he might have come to the same conclusion if he had been in this situation. Though a little far-fetched.

Fred and George exchanged glances like they had just got the _best _idea for a prank.

Or maybe not.

**The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr—a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip—had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.**

"That would be confusing." Tonks said.

**Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.**

"I get that a lot." Sirius said sadly. He had been accused of going insane and mass murdering people. Harry thought on how terrible it would be to have everybody you knew turned against you and to think you were evil. Harry shuddered and shot Sirius a sympathetic look.

**It got so I almost believed them—Mrs. Dodds had never existed.**

"He said almost." Kingsley said in his gravelly voice. Harry jumped. Kingsley had been so quiet in the corner, he almost forgot he was there.

**Almost.**

Remus grinned at Kingsley. Sirius chuckled quietly.

**But Grover couldn't fool me.**

"Grover needs to learn how to lie." Fred said. Hermione glared at him. "He shouldn't be lying to Percy in the first place." Harry silently agreed with Hermione, but didn't say anything.

**When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, and then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying.**

**Something was going on. Something **_**had **_**happened at the museum.**

"No duh! We just read about it!" Ron said.

Hermione looked thoughtful. "Actually, since this book is in Percy's perspective, it could have been a hallucination and we would never know."

**I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.**

Harry shivered, remembering the visions he'd get in the night. They were getting worse…

**The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. **

Tonks frowned. "The weather is mentioned again."

**One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.**

Hermione looked worried. "I didn't realize it was that bad. It sounds…magical."

Harry grew worried. "Is Voldemort affecting the States?"

Kingsley shook his head. "Not from any reports we've heard."

**I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs.**

Hermione looked torn between disappointed and worried. Ron just looked confused. "What are Ds and Fs?"

Hermione opened her mouth to answer, but Harry cut her off. "Ds and Fs are part of the muggle grading system. There similar to our 'Ts' for troll."

Ron winced. "Ouch."

**I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. **

**I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.**

"Oh, dear." Molly commented, looking concerned for this boy she'd never met.

**Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.**

Ginny looked angry. "He's not too lazy! He has a medical condition!"

Remus and Hermione nodded in agreement.

Ron whispered to Harry. "What does old sot mean?"

Hermione overheard them anyway and stated matter-of-factly just to get on Ron's nerves. "It means old drunkard."

Harry tried to hide his grin. The twins burst out laughing.

"We've got to remember that!" They laughed, wiping tears from their eyes.

**The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.**

Hermione bit her lip.

**Fine, I told myself. Just fine.**

**I was homesick.**

Harry smiled sympathetically at the book. He always felt homesick for Hogwarts over the summer. He was glad he was here now, at Grimmauld place, rather than at the Dursleys.

**I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.**

Obnoxious stepfather? That doesn't sound good…

**And yet... there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view** **of the woods outside my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend,** **even if he was a little strange.**

Harry smiled. Percy was loyal to his friend.

**I worried how he'd survive next year without me.**

Ginny smiled at the book, while Mrs. Weasley cooed.

**I'd miss Latin class, too—Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.**

**As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for.**

"The _only_ test?" Hermione asked, looking aghast. Ron rolled his eyes.

"I don't blame him." Ron muttered under his breath., and Hermione gave him a dirty look.

**I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.**

Harry frowned. "Life and death doesn't sound very promising." Tonks commented.

**The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the **_**Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology **_**across my dorm room. **

Harry could already imagine Mrs. Pince yelling at Percy with her high, scratchy voice, scolding him about taking care of books. That woman loved books waaay too much. **(A/N: no offense to people who love books, im one of them!)**

**Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. **

"Dyslexia sounds terrible." Ron shuddered.

**There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon,** **or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.**

**I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.**

Ginny opened her mouth to comment, but then stopped herself shaking her head. "I don't even want to know how he knows what that feels like."

The twins just grinned deviously.

**I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. **_**I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.**_

Why him? It seemed Percy had enough troubles without the teacher making him try harder than he could.

**I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.**

Hermione nodded approvingly and Ron rolled his eyes again.

**I'd never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.**

Remus looked thoughtful. "At least he is trying. That's what counts."

**I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.**

**I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said,**

_**"...**_ **worried about Percy, sir."**

Tonks looked confused. "Why is Grover there?"

"More importantly, why is Grover talking to a teacher about his best mate?" Ron asked, sounding a bit irritated.

**I froze.**

"I would too." Ron muttered under his breath, still slightly upset.

**I'm not usually an eavesdropper,** **but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.**

The twins inched forward at the mention of a dare, but drooped their heads as soon as they heard what it was.

"That would be i_mpossible_."

**I inched closer.**

**"... alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the **_**school**_**! Now that we know for sure, and **_**they **_**know too—"**

"I'm confused, was that hag creature a _Kindly one?" _Ginny asked.

Remus furrowed his brow. "I think so."

"I really think they should change the name."

"Yeah, they should be called the evil demon math teachers!" Fred put in.

"Or the ugly fruit flies!" George suggested.

"The ugly fruit flies?" Ron asked incredulously.

"That sounds like a muggle band." Tonks commented almost absentmindedly.

"She had wings!" George defended himself.

Ginny just looked exasperated by this conversation. "Forget I said anything."

**"We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."**

"Why do they need him to mature more?"

**"But he may not have time. The summer solstice dead line— **_**"**_

"I hate deadlines," Ron mumbled.

"That's only because you never finish anything on time." Hermione said loftily.

Kingsley's brow furrowed in thought.

"This sounds more…. serious."

**"Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."**

Harry frowned. That sounded suspiciously like something Dumbledore had said before about him.

**"Sir, he **_**saw **_**her... ."**

"Well, at least we know now she wasn't a hallucination."

**"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."**

Everyone exchanged confused glances. "_They_'re behind all this?"

Harry frowned again. Why would Grover and Mr. Brunner try to make Percy forget about Mrs. Dodds?

"What in the world is the _Mist_?" was Ron's question.

Ginny looked at him, irritated. "Why the bloody 'ell would we know?"

"Language." Mrs. Weasley scolded, but it was a half-heartened attempt.

**"Sir, I ... I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."**

"Why does failing his duties sound a lot worse than its supposed to?" Harry asked as that uncomfortable feeling swirled around inside him again.

No one answered him.

**"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—"**

Harry went pale, as did most of the room. Keeping Percy alive? That sounded like Percy was in great danger-maybe even more so than Harry.

**The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.**

The Weasley twins broke from thinking morbid thoughts about Percy's death to scold the book.

"Never give away your position! That's like the number one rule in the book!"

Ginny decided not to tell them Percy wasn't actually here and this had probably already happened.

**Mr. Brunner went silent.**

**My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.**

"Good, get out of there." Ron nodded approvingly.

"Shouldn't he try to talk to Mr. Brunner? He might be able to find out something." Mrs. Weasley put in.

Tonks snorted. "In Percy's position, I would trust Mr. Brunner as far as I could throw him. I mean, the guy erased memories of someone who just tried to _kill _him and is obviously doing something behind his back."

Mrs. Weasley shrugged and conceded the point, albeit a little reluctantly.

**A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.**

"Archer's bow? Why would Mr. Brunner have an archer's bow?" Hermione asked confused.

"_Obviously, _it's not Brunner. It even said that the shadow was taller than him." Ron said. Hermione pursed her lips at his tone.

"It still doesn't clear up why there is someone with an archer's bow."

Ron shrugged with a look that clearly said 'Why am I supposed to know?'

**I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.**

**A few seconds later I heard a slow **_**clop-clop-clop, **_**like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, and then moved on.**

"Another monster?" Harry looked nervous for Percy's sake.

"Something with hooves, maybe." Hermione said thoughtfully before continuing.

**A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.**

**Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."**

"When's the winter solstice?" Ron asked.

"If you would pay attention in astronomy, you would know."

Ron scowled.

Hermione sighed. "The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year; the summer solstice is the longest."

"It sounds rather important; something must have happened on that date." Remus pointed out.

**"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn ..."**

**"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."**

"I hate exams." The twins groaned.

**"Don't remind me."**

**The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.**

**I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.**

**Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.**

**Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.**

**"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"**

**I didn't answer.**

**"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"**

**"Just... tired."**

Fred and George laughed despite the downward mood. "Percy's almost as bad as Grover!"

**I turned so he couldn't read my expression, and started getting ready for bed.**

**I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. **

"Neither did we." Sirius said dryly.

**I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.**

Harry narrowed his eyes. He was very against the idea of Percy forgetting everything.

**But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.**

"Mrs. Dodds wasn't enough of a clue?"

**The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam,**

"Three hours?" Sirius, Ron, Harry, Fred and George all yelled indignantly.

**my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.**

**For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.**

**"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best."**

Remus frowned. "Why is he discouraging him?"

"I don't think he's doing it on purpose." Tonks had an unhappy look on her face.

Harry knew he was going to take it the wrong way anyway.

**His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.**

Ginny glowered at the book along with Tonks. "Hate her."

Harry nodded in agreement. He despised bullies.

**I mumbled, "Okay, sir."**

**"I mean ..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."**

Hermione grimaced. "He's just making it worse."

**My eyes stung.**

**Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.**

"Nobody's destined to get kicked out." Said Remus, always the teacher.

The twins grinned like Cheshire cats. "Yah, we've done tons of pranks and we've never gotten kicked out!"

Mrs. Weasley eyed them, one eyebrow up in an inquiring manner. "And just what kind of pranks would you be doing, hmm?"

Fred and George did their best to look completely innocent-and failed miserably. "Nothing."

**"Right," I said, trembling.**

**"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be—"**

**"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."**

**"Percy—"**

**But I was already gone.**

Harry felt bad for Percy. He would have probably done the same thing. Maybe they were alike in more ways than one.

**On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.**

**The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were **_**rich **_**juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.**

"You don't have to be rich to be somebody!" Ginny protested.

"Yah, look at Malfoy. He's an absolute nobody!" Ron agreed, seemingly trying to cheer up Percy, who wasn't actually there.

**They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.**

**What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.**

**"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."**

"At least some of them are nice." Tonks pointed out.

**They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.**

"Oh."

"**The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had,**

"Cause that's not suspicious at all..." Ron drawled lightly.

**so there we were, together again, heading into the city.**

Ginny looked up at the occupants of the table. "What is New York like?"

"I heard they have huge skyscrapers and lots of traffic and it's very busy."

"Really? Sounds kind of like London."

"** During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.**

"Looking for more monsters." Hermione said knowledgably.

**Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.**

**Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.**

**I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"**

Fred and George gave identical smirks. "He's going to scare Grover to death!"

**Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"**

"We were right!" The twins yelled and gave each other a high-five. Ginny rolled her eyes.

**I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.**

**Grover's eye twitched. "How much **_**did **_**you hear?"**

**"Oh ... not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"**

"That's what I'd like to know. " Mr. Weasley said with a small frown.

**He winced. "Look, Percy ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers …"**

"He can't honestly expect Percy to believe that!" Tonks said skeptically.

"I think we already covered that Grover's a bad liar."

"I know, but demon math teachers? Come on!"

There was a moment of silence in which George realized something.

"Hey Fred, wasn't demon math teachers what you said before?" George asked.

Fred looked away in thought for a moment. "I do believe it was, followed by your suggestion of '_ugly fruit flies.'"_ He said smirking.

George pouted and motioned for Hermione to continue.

**"Grover—"**

**"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and ..."**

"Overstressed?" Tonks scoffed.

**"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."**

**His ears turned pink.**

"Good. He's ashamed of lying to his best friend." Harry said.

"I think Grover's actually trying to protect him..." Hermione trailed off, not quite sure what to say next.

"He should still tell him!" Ron was on Harry's side.

**From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer."**

**The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:**

_**Grover Underwood**_

_**Keeper**_

_**Half-Blood Hill**_

_**Long Island, New York**_

"What's a keeper?" Ron asked.

"More importantly, what's Half-Blood Hill?" Ginny asked.

"Maybe they are half-bloods of a sort." Kingsley said from his chair.

"That might explain how they are 'sort of' muggles. They could be half-muggle!" Hermione theorized.

"And half-what?"

Ginny's question was met with silence.

"I guess we'll find out."

**"What's Half—"**

**"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um ... summer address."**

"That is unusual. Why can't Percy say it out loud?" Mr. Weasley questioned.

"Maybe it has an enchantment on it, like one for Grimmauld place." Kingsley pointed out.

Remus frowned. "Perhaps. But I don't believe they are wizards. Remember what Dumbledore said."

Kingsley nodded thoughtfully.

**My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.**

"Somehow I don't believe that is the case." Sirius said.

**"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."**

**He nodded. "Or...or if you need me."**

**"Why would I need you?"**

Harry frowned. Even if Grover was lying to him, it was no excuse to be rude.

**It came out harsher than I meant it to.**

Good.

**Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."**

**I stared at him.**

"I would too." Ron nodded. Harry silently agreed with him.

**All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended **_**me.**_

**"Grover," I said, "What exactly are you protecting me from?"**

Ginny looked impatient. "I do hope he actually tells us this time."

Hermione gave a sour frown, like she was thinking the same thing. She _hated_ not knowing something.

**There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs.**

Mrs. Weasley and Ginny wrinkled their noses in almost identical fashions, and Harry was tempted to do the same.

**The driver cursed and steered the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.**

**After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.**

**We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.**

"Something's off." Harry narrowed his eyes. That dangerous feeling from Mrs. Dodds had returned with a vengeance, and now _he_ felt like he was having ants crawl around inside his shirt.

**The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice**_**.**_

Ron drooled slightly at the description of food, and Harry smiled slightly despite the increased feeling of unease.

**There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.**

"I wonder how big those socks are." George looked curious.

"I don't think it really matters." Ginny said with an exasperated sigh.

"You never know." George defended and Ginny rolled her eyes.

Tonks felt the need to change the subject.

"I wonder why Percy's focusing on just these people. Do you think that they might be important?"

"I hope not." Harry said without thinking.

"Why?" Tonks questioned.

"Dunno. But I have a bad feeling about this."

"Like scar-bad?" Hermione asked, looking concerned.

Harry shook his head hurriedly. "No-nothing like that. Just…..uneasiness."

Everyone exchanged glances and Hermione continued, with growing concern for the main character.

**I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.**

"See! Percy's going into detail about the socks. They've got to be important!"

Ginny rolled her eyes again, but didn't answer.

**All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.**

**The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.**

Sirius furrowed his brow. "That's never a good sign."

"Do you think they might be more 'Kindly Ones'?" Mrs. Weasley sounded worried for Percy's sake.

Harry was worried. That feeling had just grown and now it felt like his insides were having a fiesta in the pit of his stomach.

**I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.**

Sirius frowned. "Grover knows something's up with the old ladies."

**"Grover?" I said. "Hey, man—"**

**"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"**

**"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"**

George and Fred tried a weak laugh, but the growing tension in the room just shook it off.

**"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."**

**The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.**

Hermione had this distant look on her face like she was desperately trying to think of something. Harry pondered this too. Very vaguely, in the back of his mind, he could recall parts of a story from his history class. Three women…spinning thread…..shears…

**"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."**

**"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."**

**"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.**

"I remember!" Hermione cried triumphantly.

All eyes turned to her in a moment.

"From Greek Mythology! The three sisters! They spin the thread of everyone's life."

Remus gave her a confused look. "Are you saying the Greek myths are _alive_?"

Hermione bit her lip. "Possibly. I'm not sure. And I don't know how Percy fits into all of this."

The table was silent as they took in this new information.

"Anything else on the old women?" Tonks asked tentatively after a moment.

Hermione nodded. "They're also known as the Fates. They determine what happens in everyone's life. Birth, marriage, death…" Hermione trailed off with a choking sound.

Ron looked concerned, eyes wide with alarm. "What's the matter?"

"I just recalled…how they determine death."

The room seemed to be holding their breath.

"They cut the person's string…" Hermione became silent as the room took this in with horrified looks.

Hadn't the old ladies pulled out a pair of shears?

Hermione didn't want to wait any longer, so she continued reading.

**Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that **_**snip **_**across four lanes of traffic.**

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. Harry chanted in his head. He prayed that Percy would be all right.

**Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.**

The twins couldn't manage a smile-not after hearing that Percy was going to die. He seemed like a good guy.

**At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.**

"Convenient." Kingsley said quietly.

**The passengers cheered.**

**"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"**

**Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.**

Mrs. Weasley's eyes were wide with worry. "Has it already started?" She whispered, thinking it a result of the Fates.

No one answered. They knew nothing about this world.

**Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.**

"He knows." Kingsley said grimly.

"I wonder what he is…." Remus said.

**"Grover?"**

**"Yeah?"**

**"What are you not telling me?"**

"Everything?" The twins tried to lighten the mood.

Harry wasn't able to give a smile. After all, Percy was going to die. He just wasn't able to joke about that.

**He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"**

**"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like ... Mrs. Dodds, are they?"**

"They might be much _much_ worse." Ginny said with a grimace. The room had begun to thaw out, but I didn't relieve the tension and the worry for Percy.

**His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."**

**"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."**

Hermione shuddered at this reminder.

**He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.**

"Observant." Kingsley said almost absentmindedly.

**He said, "You saw her snip the cord."**

**"Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.**

**"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."**

All the blood from Harry's face drained. This had happened before? He didn't think he like this culture, but from the sounds of it, they didn't have a choice.

**"What last time?"**

**"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."**

"That's really comforting. Percy must be freaking out." Ron said.

**"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"**

**"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."**

"Still trying to protect him. Good." Mrs. Weasley gruffly and turned to glare at the rest of the room.

"He's not dead yet!**(A/N: That just reminded me of a movie quote-"I'm not dead yet." Kind of random.. .Anyone know what awesome movie that is from? Sorry for interrupting the story.)** Stop acting like there's not a chance!"

Sirius and Harry straightened in there chair. She was right, of course. Percy wasn't dead yet.

**This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.**

**"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.**

**No answer.**

**"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"**

Again everyone shivered.

"Looks like he remembered something from Latin class." Hermione noted.

**He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.**

**A/N: sorry for the long wait. Hope to be faster next time. Remember Reviews=Happiness.**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Yes, I'm finally updating! Happy President's day!**

Chapter 4

The twins tried to make light of the situation.

"For future reference, I would like daffodils on my coffin." Fred announced.

George spoke in a mock falsetto voice. "Oh yes! Hot pink daffodils would be perfect!"

They smirked at each other.

Sirius looked impatient.

"I think it's my turn to read." He said, smirking slightly at his cousin as Hermione handed over the book without protest.

Harry felt numb. He tried to shake it off. Why was he feeling so worried? Those three old ladies couldn't possibly be the fates, could they? Then again, stranger things have happened.

"**Grover Unexpectedly Loses his Pants," **

Everyone exchanged looks and broke out into spontaneous laughter.

"Grover…-pants?" Fred gasped out.

Harry wrapped his arms around his stomach and shook his head, laughing too hard to respond. He had no idea what was happening in this chapter, but these names so far were hilarious.

Sirius snorted a couple more times, before waving his hands to quiet the rest of the group.

"As much as I like these…._amusing _chapter titles, we have to finish this book sometime in the foreseeable future."

Harry smiled and then nodded, along with most of the people in the room.

**Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.**

Ginny groaned. "He's trying to protect you, you dolt!"

"Ginny, you realize-"

"-that you're talking to a book."

The twins gave their signature crooked grins and Ginny grumbled under her breath about throttling older brothers.

**I know, I know. It was rude. **

"Yes it was." Hermione pursed her lips and Mrs. Weasley frowned disapprovingly.

**But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to be sixth grade?"**

"That would be freaky." Harry conceded, though inside he wondered if he would do the same if Ron thought he was going to die.

**Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom.**

Now it was Remus's turn to frown.

**Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.**

**"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.**

"We know where he lives!" Fred and George chortled. "Now we can go visit him!"

Mrs. Weasley gave them a very stern glare and they seemed to rethink their plan of action.

**A word about my mother, before you meet her.**

**Her name is Sally Jackson and she's the best person in the world, **

Mrs. Weasley smiled.

Harry was overcome by a slight pang of sadness, wishing he could remember his own mother. Sirius saw his fallen face and gave a sympathetic smile.

Harry replied with his own soft smile. At least he had his godfather.

**which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck.**

Mrs. Weasley's smile fell and Hermione looked worried.

Ginny was quiet for a moment before speaking up. "I agree with Percy, the best people have the worst luck."

Harry swore she was looking straight at him. He felt like his face was on fire.

Sirius, despite the situation, smirked at him before reading again.

**Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. **

"That's eerily similar to what my life was like before Hogwarts." Harry said.

**She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.**

"That's so sad." Hermione said. Tonks nodded in agreement.

**The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.**

smiled at her husband and Tonks shoot a discrete look at Remus.

Ginny tilted her head ever so slightly to the right in a curious expression. "I wonder why he hasn't mentioned his dad before."

Harry shrugged.

**I don't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn't like to talk about him because **_**it **_**makes her sad. She has no pictures.**

"Oh." Ginny bit her lip.

Harry suddenly felt depressed. How many people without parents were there?

**See, they weren't married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.**

"He might still be alive." Tonks said weakly.

"If his is, he abandoned Percy." Harry snarled. He felt a rush of anger at this man who he'd never met. What kind of person just abandons their own child?

"We don't know that." Mr. Weasley told him quietly. "There could be extenuating circumstances that won't allow him to be there."

Harry nodded reluctantly.

**Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.**

"Wait," Ginny scrunched her forehead like she was having a brain freeze. "How can someone be lost at sea, but not dead? Isn't that what lost at sea means?"

"He could be stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, but that's highly unlikely." Remus said, half-jokingly.

**She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. **

"Wow." Ron said, looking shocked. The twins just gaped at the book, mouths open like fishes.

"She must have some restraint." Mrs. Weasley said

**But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.**

**Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him,** **then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. **

"That doesn't sound too good." Hermione said worriedly and Harry nodded in agreement.

**When I was young, I nick named him Smelly Gabe. **

Tonks gave an unladylike snort and Sirius hid his smile.

**I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.**

Hermione and Ginny crinkled their noses and Tonks had a tinge of green in her cheeks.

**Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along ... well, when I came home is a good example.**

**I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. **

"What's poker?" Ginny asked curiously.

"Muggle gambling game." Hermione informed her, tone stating that she disapproved strongly of it.

**The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.**

"That's disgusting!" Mrs. Weasley exclaimed.

**Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."**

Ron scrunched his nose. "Wonderful welcome, that is." He said sarcastically.

**"Where's my mom?"**

**"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"**

"He's asking a child for money?" Mrs. Weasley did not look happy.

Harry frowned. So far, he hated Smelly Gabe.

**That was it. No **_**Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?**_

"Probably would have died of shock if that would have happened." George said, trying to keep everyone's spirits up.

**Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.**

Tonks looked down at the book in clear revulsion, though Harry was pretty sure it was directed at the character in it.

**He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. **

"This doesn't sound good at all." Hermione frowned, concerned.

**Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. **

Mrs. Weasley grumbled something about horrible muggles and innocent children.

**He called that our "guy secret." Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out.**

"What?" Mrs. Weasley shrieked, face red and Harry covered his ears. Everyone looked furious.

"Threatening a child-why I'd never-" Mrs. Weasley stuttered, to upset to form complete sentences.

"That foul beastly man." Ginny declared.

Harry was torn between angry and worry. He shuddered to think of when the Weasleys and Sirius heard the Dursley had done a _bit _more that threaten Harry. It wouldn't be pretty.

**"I don't have any cash," I told him.**

"Yes, lie!" The twins encouraged and for once in a billion years Mrs. Weasley didn't scold them for it.

**He raised a greasy eyebrow.**

**Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.**

**"You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. "Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"**

"But he's a _child_!" Mrs. Weasley exclaimed again.

"Bet Gabe can't even carry himself up the stairs." Fred muttered darkly.

**Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. **

**"Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."**

"At least someone cares."Tonks pointed out.

"Not much. He said 'the kid just got here.' That means he doesn't care later on." Harry said bitterly, remembering some of his uncle's friend who only cared once every blue moon.

Sirius stared at him for a moment, worried about his knowing tone, before returning to the book, promising himself he would ask later.

**"Am I **_**right**_**?**_**" **_**Gabe repeated.**

**Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.**

"Gross." Tonks said.

_Yes, _Harry thought darkly, _it must be amusing to some people how similar our lives are._

**"Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."**

"I hope he does too!" Ginny stated, eyes blazing.

The table nodded in agreement.

**"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"**

"I bet he doesn't know the definition of the word 'snooty'" Hermione said through pursed lips.

**I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.**

"What kind of mother would allow that?" Mrs. Weasley asked reproachfully.

Harry didn't think Percy's mother would allow it, judging by her description, but didn't say anything.

**I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.**

"That's so sad." Tonks said mournfully and Remus, who was sitting next to her, put a comforting arm around her shoulders. She gave him a small grateful smile.

**Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds,** **or the sound of that old fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.**

The room tensed. It was easy to tell they didn't like the reminder.

**But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover's look of panic—how he'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone—something—was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.**

Harry caught his breath and clenched his hands into fists in his lap. Harry was familiar with that feeling. He'd had it most of his miserable life, and learned to ignore it for the most part, but thinking about it brought it the forefront of his mind.

**Then I heard my mom's voice. "Percy?"**

**She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.**

**My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room.**

Mrs. Weasley smiled softly at his words.

**Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad.**

"That's the way it should be." Mrs. Weasley said, quietly approving.

**I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.**

"That must have been difficult." Ron said, sounding slightly in shock.

**"Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"**

Fred raised one finger for attention. Harry turned an inch or two to face him.

"Has anyone ever noticed that every single time you come back from a long time away the first thing out of an adult's mouth is 'you've grown since I last saw you'? Even if you haven't?"

"Yah! I mean, you think they'd say something else, but it's all about your height!" Ginny put her two cents in, sounding somewhat grumpy, probably because she was rather short, he guessed.

"Why is that?" Ron asked and all the children suddenly turned to look at the rest of the adults in the room.

"Ummm…it's a secret?" Sirius's answer was more of a question.

Harry raised an eyebrow skeptically.

"You'll understand when you're older." Mr. Weasley interjected and Sirius nodded rapidly in agreement.

George sighed good-naturedly.

**Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when I came home.**

"Awesome." Ron said, starring off in thought, nearly drooling.

"Boys." Hermione shook her head exasperatingly. "Always thinking of their stomachs."

**We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?**

**I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.**

Mrs. Weasley smiled happily and practically cooed.

Ron rolled his eyes and mouthed "Mama's boy" again behind his mother's back.

Harry hid a sad smile.

**From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"**

Harry gritted his teeth, along with most of the room.

**I gritted my teeth.**

Harry smiled inwardly at the similarity between their actions.

**My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.**

**For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. **

"That's kind of depressing that he's that happy about lasting _almost_ a whole year." Tonks said.

**I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself.**

**I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.**

"That must have been a really good spin." Harry said disbelievingly.

**Until that trip to the museum...**

**"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"**

**"No, Mom."**

Mrs. Weasley frowned disapprovingly. "He should tell her the truth; she might be able to help."

**I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.**

Harry understood that. He didn't want to upset the one person in the world who cared about him.

**She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.**

**"I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."**

**My eyes widened. "Montauk?"**

**"Three nights—same cabin."**

**"When?"**

**She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."**

**I couldn't believe it. My mom and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.**

"Enough money for gambling, but not for a trip to the beach?" Mr. Weasley growled.

**Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"**

Harry gritted his teeth again and squeezed the side of his chair, hard, to release some of his utter revulsion for this man.

**I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom's eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.**

Mrs. Weasley now looked very concerned. "She doesn't want to be near him either. Why not just divorce him and get away from him?"

Harry knew what everyone else was thinking: What if he was threatening her too?

**"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."**

**Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"**

Harry glared at the book. "He'd better let them go."

**"I knew it," I muttered. "He won't let us go."**

**"Of course he will," my mom said evenly. "Your step father is just worried about money. That's all. **

"Worried about money, my-Ronald Weasley!" Ron's mother interrupted him.

**Besides," she added, "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."**

"Bribery." Sirius said, but he didn't sound too upset about this.

**Gabe softened a bit. "So this money for your trip ... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"**

**"Yes, honey," my mother said.**

"Making her pay for the trip!" Mrs. Weasley fumed.

**"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."**

**"We'll be very careful."**

**Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip ... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."**

**Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.**

Fred and George's eyes grew wide. "Do it!"

Harry didn't think of himself as a violent person, but if Gabe was here right now, he would punch him in the gut.

**But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad.**

"Why does she care?" Harry muttered to himself.

**Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?**

"That's what I want to know." Mrs. Weasley huffed.

**"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."**

Hermione groaned. "Being sarcastic right now isn't going to help you."

**Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.**

"How could you _not_ detect sarcasm in that statement?"

**"Yeah, whatever," he decided.**

"What?" Tonks asked, shocked that someone could be that _stupid_.

**He went back to his game.**

**"Thank you, Percy," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"**

**For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.**

Harry shivered. In all the excitement about Gabe, he'd nearly forgotten about leaving Grover at the bus stop.

"She knows." Remus said surely.

"Then why doesn't she tell Percy? Why keep it from him?" Tonks asked, frustrated.

"Maybe because they're not old enough to know." Mrs. Weasley stated clearly, and everyone could hear the underlying message. They were still going on about that argument whether or not to inform Harry about what was happening. Harry, of course, thought he should be told on the spot and he wasn't the only one.

"He has a right to know what's happening in his life!" Sirius exclaimed.

Mrs. Weasley opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by Kingsley.

"Enough! We need to finish this book! You can continue your squabbling later, after we're done."

He fixed them both with a stern look. Harry bit his lip to keep from laughing at his godfather's pout.

**But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.**

**An hour later we were ready to leave.**

"Good, get out of there." Tonks said.

**Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.**

"More important than her?" Mrs. Weasley momentarily forgot her argument with Sirius to glare at the book in anger.

**"Not a scratch on this car, brain boy," he warned me as I loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."**

"How is he going to scratch it? He doesn't even have a permit!" Hermione frowned.

**Like I'd be the one driving. **

**I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.**

Hermione let out a "Hmph!" and sat back in her chair with her arms crossed.

**Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. **

"How did he even remember that?" Ron asked.

Harry shrugged.

**The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the stair case as if he'd been shot from a cannon. **

"What?" Remus asked confusedly.

"I'm not sure." Mr. Weasley said slowly, as if thinking over all of the possible reasons. Harry knew Hermione was doing the same, but didn't seem to come up with anything.

"More magical powers?" He ventured.

"Possibly." She conceded.

**Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.**

**I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.**

"Get away from the crime scene as fast as possible so they can't implicate you." Fred said in a false scholarly tone, like he was educating us on the esteemed principles of pranking.

Mrs. Weasley threw another stern glare in their direction and he dropped his act.

**Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets,**

Ron shuddered.

"Oh, is ickle Ronikins scared of spiders?" The twins mocked.

Ron's face turned scarlet and he glared at his teasing brothers.

**and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.**

"Why would you want to go then?" Ginny asked.

**I loved the place.**

Ginny threw her hands up in the air like 'ok then.' Harry smiled at her.

**We'd been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my dad.**

**As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.**

**We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.**

"What's up with the blue food? The candy earlier was blue too." Sirius asked.

"I'm guessing blue is his favorite color?" Harry guessed.

**I guess I should explain the blue food.**

"Yes, you should." Sirius told the book and Tonks hid her laughter at the tone her cousin was taking with a _book. _

**See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. **

Tonks opened her mouth, stopped herself, and shook her head. It just wasn't worth it.

**They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano**

Hermione shuddered at the thought of having the last name 'Ugliano.'

—**was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.**

**When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.**

"Mrs. Jackson sounds nice." Harry said, eyes shining before his face fell. He wished he could at least _remember_ his own mother.

**Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father. Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.**

**"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."**

"Blimey Harry, he sounds like you." Ron said, pointing out yet another similarity, though it wasn't the one plaguing his mind. Harry wanted to know about the prophecy.

**Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."**

**I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.**

"Sixth time in six years?" Hermione's eyes were wide.

Harry raised his eyebrows. Even though he had trouble in school, it was never that bad.

**"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean ... when he left?"**

Harry looked down into his lap. His parents had been killed, but for one of his parents to physically _leave _you…..Harry wasn't sure which was worse.

**She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."**

**"But... he knew me as a baby."**

**"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."**

The room was quiet and saddness and sympathy for Percy was almost tangible.

**I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember ... something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.**

"Wait," Hermione interjected, "if his father didn't see him-then who does he remember?"

Harry frowned. Percy didn't mention anyone else important enough for it to be them, and it certainly wasn't Smelly Gabe.

**I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he'd never even seen me...**

**I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.**

Harry felt the same anger coursing through his veins.

**"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"**

"Why doesn't Percy just go to a school nearby? Why does it have to be a boarding school?" Ginny asked and Remus frowned as he considered the question.

"There must be some good reason…..perhaps something to do with that foreign culture?"

**She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.**

**"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think ... I think we'll have to do something."**

**"Because you don't want me around?"**

"Percy!" Mrs. Weasley admonished and by Ron's wincing face it remaindered him just as much as when she used to yell at his older brother.

**I regretted the words as soon as they were out.**

"Good." Mrs. Weasley huffed and Ginny and Hermione nodded in agreement.

**My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I—I **_**have **_**to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."**

"I'm telling you, she knows." Remus reminded them.

"We heard you the first time." Sirius muttered irritably.

Remus just grinned at his old friend.

**Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy.**

**"Because I'm not normal," I said.**

"That's not a bad thing. Everyone is unique." Remus said, taking on his teacher-like air again.

**"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."**

"From what?"

**"Safe from what?"**

Sirius gave a razor thin smirk over the edge of the cover at Tonks who simply rolled her eyes.

**She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.**

"Like the Kindly One?" Mrs. Weasley asked worriedly.

"It's happened before?" Hermione said at the same time.

**During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.**

Silence.

"Cyclops?"

"They're not supposed to exist." Remus said uncertainly.

"Well apparently they do." Harry said before turning to Hermione. "Do you remember anything about Cyclops in the Greek myths?"

Hermione nodded. "Not much, but I know they existed in them."

"More and more evidence towards the Greek theory." Sirius noted before continuing reading.

**Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.**

George opened his mouth to comment, then closed it, then looked up again before giving up. This had to be the first time Harry knew of that one of the twins was at a loss for words.

Hermione meanwhile seemed to be concentrating all of her attention on one spot in the distance.

"I think….that might have been another Greek myth as well."

"Really?"

"Yes, I seem to vaguely remember a story where a child was attacked by snakes and he killed them."

"Did they say why?"

""They were sent by someone…" Hermione frowned at the table. "Why can't I remember?"

**In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.**

**I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.**

"But you could be in danger!"

**"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."**

"Who's 'they?' And why would Percy's dad want him to go to this certain place?"

**"My father wanted me to go to a special school?"**

**"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."**

**My head was spinning. Why would my dad—who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see me born— talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?**

Kingsley frowned. "That is mighty suspicious."

**"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."**

"Why?" Harry was getting impatient with this book. Why couldn't anyone just tell you the answer outright?

**"For good? But if it's only a summer camp ..."**

**She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.**

"Women." Ron stated with his nose up in the air. "Using their tears against you!"

Hermione answered by whacking him across the back of his head.

**That night I had a vivid dream.**

Harry frowned, the dreams kept getting more and more vivid…..

**It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf.**

Hermione gasped. "Don't you see? It's symbolic! Each of the Greek gods had a symbol...Oh why can't I remember?"

Harry frowned. It wasn't like Hermione to forget something, even the random stuff they learned in grade school.

**The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.**

The room seemed to shake as everyone collectively shivered.

**I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, **_**No!**_

**I woke with a start.**

"Thank goodness."

**Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.**

Harry frowned. Something told him this wasn't just a coincidence.

**With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, **

**"Hurricane."**

Sirius read the word and his eyes widened.

"Oh no." Tonks whispered.

They're heard of the damage a hurricane could wreck.

**I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. **

**Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.**

No one wanted to break the tense silence, shifting over the room like a cloak.

**Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.**

Harry was reminded very much of his eleventh birthday.

**My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.**

**Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grover.**

"Not exactly Grover?" Mr. Weasley's brow furrowed.

**"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"**

**My mother looked at me in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.**

"Why would she be scared of Grover?"

**"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"**

**I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.**

"What are you seeing? Please describe!" Ginny shouted impatiently and Harry had half a mind to do the same.

_**"O Zeus kai alloi theoi!" **_**he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you **_**tell **_**her?"**

"What's right behind him?"

"What language was that?"

Sirius glared down at the other people. "Just wait and the book will tell you!"

**I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. **

"See?" Sirius looked smug.

"READ!" The table shouted.

Sirius grumbled but continued.

**I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on—**

"Whoa."

**and where his legs should be ... where his legs should be ...**

"Please just tell us."

**My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: **_**"Percy. **_**Tell me **_**now**_**!"**

**I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.**

**She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. **_**Go**_**!**_**"**_

"Where are they going?"

**Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.**

"How?" Ginny asked to no one.

**Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.**

**A/N: Cliffhanger!-not really, but close enough. Special thanks to those who pmed me about updating! This is for you! REVIEW!**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: I'M BACK! THIS STORY HAS NOT BEEN ABANDONED! **

**I feel horrible. I kind of went AWOL after the last chapter. i wrote like half of the chapter the next day. Then I was overcome with a mixture of school/other stories/homework/cold/writer's block. Will definitely update faster next time, though don't expect anything soon.**

**HERE IS A THANKS TO ALL OF MY TOTALLY EPIC REVIEWERS WHO ENCOURAGED ME TO CONTINUE. NEVER COULD HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU:**

**General E: I am trying…THANKS.**

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**LuvvAlexander: Well, yes they did meet but he was one, do you really expect him to know them? I'm not actually trying to get sympathy for Harry and just trying to interpret it as how I think it might have really happened. And Harry is sometimes jealous of Ron having a mother and father(I'm pretty sure I remember reading that, if not, sorry). But I do use that a lot, and I will take that into consideration in the future. And don't go hating on yourself! A lot of great fanfic stories are written by twelve year olds and you actually had valid points AND GOOD GRAMMAR. Sorry, I have OCD and it just bugs me so much when people spell easy things wrong or use incorrect grammar. So THANK YOU for your awesome (and grammatically correct) review!**

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**ShoshonaTheRose: My intention for this story was for the Harry Potter characters too find out about the gods and how awesome Percy and friends are. I like PJO better, but Dumbledore was trying to bridge the gap between the two world by comparing as many similarities as possible. Also remember that is in Harry's pov-third person limited. This means Harry's taking Dumbledore's words and putting them to use in his head. I'm still debating whether or not to bring in PJO characters. THANK YOU!**

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**Y: I think that there wasn't enough clues to figure it out, because one: Harry Potter centaurs don't bows and arrows(at least, not that I can recall) and b: It did not mention a horse body at all plus I don't think they think a horse body could fit into a wheelchair without magic. (Did you notice I said 1 and then b? I just realized that) As for them being IC, that was my whole point! Because so many of these take them so out of character, and it annoyed me so much. By reviewing, you are helping me stay in character-THANK YOU SO MUCH!**

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**Special Shout out to PerryGriggs, shadow gods of the fallen, A Contridiction, and XxBlackOpsCommanderxX who actually cared enough to pm me! THANK YOU!**

**Enjoy the chapter.**

Previously:

_**Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.**_

"_How?" Ginny asked to no one. _

_**Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.**_

Chapter 5

Everyone's faces were contorted into masks of blatant confusion, including Harry's. He could barely even _try _to imagine it. Hooves? What the heck does that mean for Grover?

"Like, animal hooves?" Ginny asked confusedly. "How can someone have animal hooves?"

"Like a centaur, maybe?" Ron reasoned.

"No, if Grover was a centaur, he wouldn't be able to hide his entire horse body." Hermione said.

"No, not like that." Ron said irritably. "Like maybe he's half animal or something."

Hermione looked pensive for a moment before her mouth fell open in a small "o" of enlightenment.

"Ron, you're a genius!" She exclaimed. ("I am?")She got up from her chair and ran into the other room.

"Where are you going?!" Ron yelled into the other room. Loud creaks could be heard from the ceiling as Hermione walked around upstairs.

"Lower your voice." Mrs. Weasley said to Ron, who grumbled.

The aged stairs accentuated her footsteps into stomps as she flew down them, book in hand. She flopped into her chair, setting the book down onto the table with a loud thump.

"What's that?" Tonks asked curiously. Hermione flipped through the book before stopping at a random page and stared intently at it.

"It's on Greek Mythology. I borrowed it from a library near my house for some summer reading."

"Summer reading?" Ron whispered incredulously to Harry at the massive tome.

She returned back to the book, skipping a few pages till she found one that was satisfactory.

"Here! He's a satyr! I remember reading about them. Half-man, half-goat!" She stated dramatically. Ron just looked confused.

"Half goat? Who would want to be half-goat?" They ignored him.

"More mythological creatures?" Remus asked. Hermione nodded.

"I don't know why I didn't think of it before."

"So, now we have sat-somethings, ("Satyrs!"), stalker Cyclops, and not-so Kindly Ones. All from Greek Mythology?" Sirius asked.

"Sounds about right."

"So, if everything so far has to do with Greek mythology, it's safe to assume Percy's some sort of half-human creature too?"

"Sounds weird when you say it like that, but yes, I suppose that's correct."

Remus stared off thoughtfully at the faded wallpaper. "Wonder what he could be."

Hermione sighed in frustration. "There are so many things he _could_ be."

"Well, Percy's body isn't abnormal in any way, so perhaps a humanoid being?"

Hermione slowly thought this over. "That narrows it down a bit…let me think…most of the monsters weren't humanoid though…"

Harry was stuck with a sudden inspiration. With excited jade eyes he hurriedly turned in Hermione's direction. "What if we've been looking at it all wrong? What if Percy isn't part monster?" They stared at him confusedly. Harry motioned absently with his hands. "Who defeated the monsters?"

Hermione blinked, struggling to see where this was going. "The heroes; Hercules, Achilles…"

Her voice trailed off and she gave a sudden gasp.

"What?" Sirius asked in confusion.

She didn't answer, instead rapidly flipping through her book.

Harry tried to answer for her. "I can't remember much, but I remember there was something off with most of the heroes; thought Hermione might know."

The rest of the room turned back to Hermione, who was muttering to herself, eyes glued to a page. On the one next to it Harry could see a colorful illustration of a guy with armor who was battling a serpent-looking creature.

"If it's true….the implications…how did I not see it before?"

Ron was growing impatient.

"Can you tell us already?"

Hermione snapped out of daze and looked excitedly at the group.

"The heroes, some of them, only had one parent-"

"Like Percy." Remus nodded.

"That was because, their father, or other parent I guess, they….they were gods."

/

The room was quiet.

Hermione flustered. "It makes sense! The heroes always had to go fight monsters, and there are loads of tales about demigods, who were also known as _half-bloods_….."

She met with gaping mouths and shocked looks. You could have heard a pin drop it was so silent. The light above the table flickered once.

Twice.

Kingsley was the first to recover.

"She proves a valid point. If magic can exist…"He took a deep breath, as if trying to bring himself to say the next words "…why not gods?"

"Why haven't we heard of them before?" Mr. Weasley asked, his voice hoarse.

"They probably have their own ways of hiding." Remus mused.

The res t of the table broke out into similar conclusions or arguments.

Harry was still warming up to the idea of gods even existing. But then again, if there were Fates, like Hermione said, then…then did they control everything? Was everything that happened pre-determined? It made his head hurt just thinking about it. Maybe everything wasn't his fault. Harry sighed internally. It would be so much easier to just blame Fate, but that wasn't like Harry. He shook his head and tried to keep his mind off these disturbing topics.

"I'll read." Harry offered quietly.

Sirius, along with several others, jolted from his reverie and conversations with this statement.

"Oh, er, yes." Sirius appeared to have forgotten he was even holding the book in the first place. He shook his head and handed the green book to Harry.

Harry cleared his throat for their attention, but it wasn't needed. Everyone was staring at him, unsure if their theory would be confirmed, whether they wanted it or not.

"**My Mother Teaches me Bullfighting," **

The twins grinned, apparently unaffected by the thought of immortal, all-powerful beings.

"Mum, why can't you teach _us_ bullfighting?" They said with a fake pout.

Mrs. Weasley just rolled her eyes.

**We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the wind shield. I didn't know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.**

"Gas, like in the air?" Tonks asked, face contorted in confusion.

"Muggle expression. It means to go fast." Remus told her.

"How so?"

Mr. Weasley leaned forward over the table excitedly. Nothing could dent his strange obsession with muggle objects.

"See muggles, use this fuel called gasoline-"

"I'm sure you can explain it _after_ the book." Mrs. Weasley cut in, looking stern.

Mr. Weasley sat back in his seat reluctantly.

**Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants.**

"I'm going to have to go with insane." Said Harry, trying to joke casually.

"I think you'd have to _be_ insane just to wear shag-carpet pants." Ron stated with his usual lack of tact.

"_I _think they're the next new craze." Fred said, making his voice haughty and condescending.

George caught on quickly. "Shag-carpet skirts are becoming _very _popular in Germany nowadays." He said knowingly.

Harry laughed into his hand and saw several others doing the same.

**But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo— lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal.**

Ginny wrinkled her nose along with Mrs. Weasley.

**All I could think to say was, "So, you and my mom... know each other?"**

"Way to make that sound awkward." Sirius laughed, easing the tension somewhat.

**Graver's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."**

"That didn't help much either."

"Do you really feel the need to comment about every little thing?" Tonks sounded irritated at her cousin.

"Yes." He smirked at her.

Tonks huffed and turned the other way.

Remus smiled faintly at their antics.

**"Watching me?"**

"Stalker!"

"Really? Must you?" Sirius smirked smugly. Tonks sat there for a moment just glaring at him before a slow smile spread across her face.

"I think it's a bit hypocritical of you to Grover a stalker. After all, didn't you practically stalk Harry in his third year?"

"That's different!" He flustered. Harry covered his mouth to hide his snickers at Sirius's face.

"How so?" Tonks seemed determined to win the argument.

"I was trying to protect him! And I was really following Wormtail."

"What makes you think Grover isn't doing the same thing?"

"Why would Grover ever want to follow Wormtail?"

Tonks slapped her hand to her forehead. "That's not what I – oh, never mind!"

Hermione just shook her head and Sirius's dark eyes danced with silent laughter.

**"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I **_**am **_**your friend."**

"I least he still wants to be his friend. I mean, Grover's like his only friend." Harry gave a sad smile.

"Why can he comment and not me?" Sirius asked in a whiney voice.

"Because he's not annoying."

**"Um ... what **_**are **_**you, exactly?"**

"That is such I weird question. 'Hi Grover, just what exactly are you?'" Tonks tries to mimic an American accent and utterly fails.

Remus chuckled at her and she glared mockingly.

**"That doesn't matter right now."**

**"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey—"**

"I'm pretty sure it's a goat." Hermione says in that all-knowing tone of hers. Fred and George rolled their eyes in sync. Harry absentmindedly wondered if they practiced that or if it was a twin thing.

**Grover let out a sharp, throaty **_**"Blaa-ha-ha!"**_

Ron snorted into his hand as Harry attempted to sound like whatever noise was coming out of Grover.

Sirius and the twins didn't hide theirs so well.

"What was that?" Sirius gasped, black eyes twinkling.

Harry frowned good-naturedly as they laughed at his expense. "That's what it said to do in the book!" He tried defending himself.

"You sounded like dying goblin." Ron snickered.

"I think we need an encore!" Fred laughed.

Still grumbling, Harry continued to read.

**I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. **

"How could you mistake _that _for a nervous laugh?" Sirius asked, referring to Harry's previous attempt at bleating.

**Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.**

"That would be strange. Could you imagine bleating instead of laughing?" Ron asked.

"Your laugh sounds kind of like a bleat." Hermione pointed out.

"It does not!"

**"Goat!" he cried.**

"I was right!" Hermione said triumphantly.

Ron rolled his eyes.

**"What?"**

"He really is rather slow, isn't he?" Ginny asked.

Hermione shrugged.

Harry felt the need to defend Percy. "He's not slow! He's just…easily distracted!"

"I think that comes with the whole ADHD thing."

Hermione turned to stare at Ron in shock. "That's _two _smart things you've said just this chapter!"

"Why is that so surprising?" He eyed her suspiciously.

She stiffened. "Well-It's just that, um-"

"Yes?"

"You aren't really in the practice of making, um, smart comments?" Her voice went kind of small at the end.

"What!" Ron's face was rapidly turning red.

"It's nothing, really-" she began hurriedly.

"You're just jealous I got it before you!" Ron said angrily.

For Hermione, this seemed to be the last straw.

"JEALOUS?!"

They continued arguing loudly.

The rest of the table looked around awkwardly, not sure if they should get involved. Harry had a feeling getting in between them just might blow up in their faces. He wondered if this is what Hermione felt like when he and Ron were fighting. He tried anyway.

"Ron, I'm sure Hermione didn't mean to-"

Ron turned on him before he could finish. "So now you're on her side?!"

"No, I mean-"

"You agree with him?!" Hermione cut in and Harry suddenly knew this had been a bad idea.

"That's not what I-"

"Whose side are you on?!"

Finally, Harry had had enough of this argument. "NOBODIES!"

Both of them stared at him, startled by his sudden anger. They knew this year would be hard on Harry, so soon after Cedric's death. He seemed more irritable and brooding lately, and so even though they were still fighting they both silently agreed not to fight outright-at least when Harry was around.

Harry huffed and picked up the sea-green book which he had thrown down on the table before.

Everyone not involved were immensely relieved that they had made up, somewhat or stopped arguing at least. Sirius hoped he was imagining the tension on Harry's face as he sighed and began to read from the book.

**"I'm a **_**goat **_**from the waist down."**

Ron was just dying to say something, Harry could tell. He gave a wane smile which seemed enough of a go ahead for Ron.

"But didn't he just say it didn't matter?"

Hermione gave him an irritated look. "I don't think he meant now."

He could only keep them from fighting for so long. Harry sighed.

"Well then he shouldn't have said it!"

She rolled her eyes.

**"You just said it didn't matter."**

"It seems slow people think alike." Hermione said scathingly. Harry wished they would stop bickering. Mrs. Weasley gave them both warning glances.

"Hey!"

_**"Blaa-ha-ha!**_

Ginny couldn't contain her giggles, along with most of room.

"Really? Does everybody have to laugh at my bleating?"

"I think it's cute." Ginny smiled at him and Harry found himself going red. Sirius wiggled his eyebrows at him and his face grew even hotter. Harry was suddenly glad for the small fight for it kept Ron from being suspicious of Harry's feelings for Ginny. Fred and George, however, made funny lovesick faces behind Ginny's turned back.

**There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"**

"He _is _a satyr." Remus said.

"I was-"

"Don't. even."

**"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like ... Mr. Brunner's myths?"**

"Technically its Greek Myths not Mr. Brunner's." Hermione said and Ron rolled his eyes.

"_Technically _they aren't even myths if this is all true." Remus put in.

**"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a **_**myth, **_**Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"**

"Moony was right." Sirius commented glumly.

**"So you **_**admit **_**there was a Mrs. Dodds!"**

"Because that _really_ matters right now."

**"Of course."**

**"Then why—"**

**"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."**

"The more the realize who they are, the more susceptible they are to monsters." Kingsley mused. "But there appears to be no logical reasoning behind it."

"The Mist appears to be some sort of illusion or oblivator or more likely, has similar properties." Remus thought out loud. Harry could practically see the gears turning in Hermione's head.

**"Who I—wait a minute, what do you mean?"**

Sirius nodded. "Ditto."

**The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.**

**"Percy," my mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."**

**"Safety from what? Who's after me?"**

"Good question." Mrs. Weasley worried.

**"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."**

"WHAT?!" the erupted into confusion.

"Lord of the Dead?!"

"Blood-thirsty minions?!"

"Bloody Hell!"

"QUIET!" Mrs. Weasley shouted suddenly, standing up and glaring at the table. "I know we're all worried about Percy, believe me, no one more than I, but commenting on every sentence does not help us get to the truth faster!"

Harry winced at Mrs. Weasley's loud voice and was suddenly reminiscent of the time Fred, George, and Ron snuck out to free him from the Dursleys. Sufficient to say, she wasn't pleased.

He severely hoped that Percy would be alright, with all the prayers for him he was bound to be OK, right? Of course, this was in the past, so it would be impossible to change it. And even if it was now would the new-found discovery of Greek gods affect this? What if they were listening in right now? He shook his head. He was getting more paranoid than Mad-eye Moody.

**"Grover!"**

**"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"**

"Isn't she already driving as fast as she can?" Tonks asked.

"Nervous habit, probably." Said Remus.

**I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. **

Harry was having a hard enough time just believing in the gods.

**I knew this wasn't a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up something this weird.**

"No imagination." Remus muttered, the inner teacher in him coming out.

Mrs. Weasley glanced at Fred and George, who were currently bent over a piece of paper and whispering between themselves, as if they had a bit too much imagination.

**My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.**

**"Where are we going?" I asked.**

"Good question." George commented. He looked up questioningly at the rest of the table.

"A safe haven for...demigods, I would suppose." Said Kingsley.

"Oh – what about that summer camp that was mentioned before?" Harry asked.

Kingsley nodded approvingly. "That could be it."

**"The summer camp I told you about." My mother's voice was tight; she was trying for my sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."**

Harry grinned as he read this. He liked being right for once.

"So Percy's dad would be a god then?" Ron asked.

"Yes," Hermione said in an attempt to act civil to Ron, "but it would be hard to determine which one is his father; there was thousands of gods mentioned throughout the Greek era."

**"The place you didn't want me to go."**

**"Please, dear," my mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."**

**"Because some old ladies cut yarn."**

"When you put it like that….." Fred drawled.

**"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to ... when someone's about to die."**

Everyone paled considerably.

**"Whoa. You said 'you.'"**

**"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"**

**"You meant 'you.' As in **_**me.**_**"**

**"I meant **_**you, **_**like 'someone.' Not you, **_**you.**_**"**

"That's confusing." Tonks said.

"I think it makes a great deal of sense." Said George. Fred nodded in agreement.

"That's because you're you." Ginny inserted from her seat.

**"Boys!" my mom said.**

**She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.**

"What was that?" Mrs. Weasley asked worriedly.

"Whatever it is - its behind them now, hopefully." Harry said though instinct was telling him he was wrong. How much trouble could one guy get into?

**"What was that?" I asked.**

**"We're almost there," my mother said, ignoring my question.**

"Why won't she just tell him?"

"Why won't she just tell _us_?" Fred complained.

"Because you're not actually there. Duh."

"Ginny." Mrs. Weasley eyed her warningly. Ginny huffed.

**"Another mile. Please. Please. Please."**

**I didn't know where **_**there **_**was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.**

Harry was doing the same unconsciously, he realized. He leaned back in his chair again but clenched his fist to relieve some of the tension. A quick glance around the room alerted him to others doing the same with sheepish looks.

**Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really **_**hadn't **_**been human. She'd meant to kill me.**

"Well duh."

"Ginerva." Mrs. Weasley said sternly. "This must be a really traumatizing experience for him."

Traumatizing. Everything in Harry's life seemed traumatizing right now. From Ron and Hermione's growing tension to Cedric dying. He sighed.

**Then I thought about Mr. Brunner ... and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling **_**boom!, **_**and our car exploded.**

The room gasped.

At that exact moment, a huge _SPOLSH_ could be heard from Harry's far right. Heads whipped around.

What looked like old melted cheese splattered onto the aged wooden tabletop, originating right in front of two red-haired twins. Fred sat motionless with an expression of shock on his face, George's identical one to his right. Their flashy Weasley hair was dripping in some sort of yellow gooey substance and their faces were covered. Hermione and Ginny, on either side, looked completely disgusted by the random drops of goo dotting their clothing. Ginny had a particularly large smudge above her left eyebrow.

"Gross! What is _that_?!" Ginny cried, trying to shake off the sticky substance.

Fred and George recovered, looking sheepish. "It's a mixture of icing, blue cheese, cheese curls, det – "

"Never mind." Ginny cut them off, looking nauseous.

Mrs. Weasley, out of the corner of his eye, was slowly turning red.

"What did I tell you about pranking during the books?! What other creations do you have hidden in your pockets? Pull them out, now!" The twins winced at their mother's tone, but proceeded to reach into their pockets and pull out various little colored blobs wrapped in plastic.

"_All_ of them." Mrs. Weasley glared down at them.

They grumbled faintly under their breath but pulled out more innocent-looking candies.

Mrs. Weasley eyed them both once more, but gathered the candies in her arms and walked away into the other room to dispose of them.

She yelled back over her shoulder, "You'd best be cleaned up by the time I return from the garbage can!"

Harry knew she would probably give them more time; this was just a warning. However, everyone else seemed to take this as a break and headed into the kitchen.

"You okay?" Ron asked Hermione, who was using a rag to dab at the splotches on her clothes. Harry hoped the gunk didn't have any dangerous magical properties they weren't aware of.

"I'm fine, at least, I think so." She glanced at Fred and George who were walking over.

"That's good - I guess." Ron stumbled a bit at the end when he finally remembered he was mad at her. Hermione gave a hidden smile at his attempt.

Fred and George, still covered in the gooey substance stopped by to speak to them. "Sorry 'bout that. It wasn't supposed to go off until later."

"Who _was_ it supposed to go off on?" Hermione asked reproached.

Fred gave a secretive smile."That's our business. Don't worry, it wasn't any of you."

"We should probably go change." George turned to Harry. "Thanks again, mate."

"For what?"

He leaned in towards him and whispered. "The money, remember? Isn't it nice to know it being put towards a good cause?" George smiled mischievously.

"Oh – yah." At the end of the last school year, Harry had won the Triwizard Tournament. Harry was already overwhelmingly rich, so he given the prize money to the Weasley twins' fund for their joke shop.

They grinned again and vanished up the stairs.

"You shouldn't encourage them." Hermione said disapprovingly.

"Too late now." Harry said, feeling abruptly tired.

"Hi Harry." He turned around swiftly and tried to ignore the slight blush on his cheeks.

"Oh – hi Ginny." She smiled at him, warm brown eyes blazing. The smear stood out on her forehead and he wondered if she knew it was there.

"I just came by the see how Hermione's doing. As traumatized as I am?"

Hermione groaned. "I don't think it's going to come out of my shirt."

"Um, Ginny?" He asked tentatively.

"Yes?" Her hair swirled around as she turned.

"You've got a – um – there's something –" He gestured to her face.

She quirked an eyebrow. "Spit it out."

Harry sighed and reached a hand up to swipe slowly at the gunk on her forehead.

"There – there was some on your forehead." He explained, feeling like an idiot.

"Oh." She said, a light blush gracing her cheeks. "Thanks."

"Glad to be of assistance." Harry said awkwardly then mentally face-palmed. Glad to be of assistance? Who says that anymore?

She gave a small smile. "Well I'd better go see if I have anything to change into."

Ron stared between them suspiciously. Harry sighed.

They said good-bye to Ginny and started a conversation about the new DADA teacher. Nobody wanted to discuss Percy's possible impending doom without hearing the rest of the story.

As people started taking their places, Harry sat down and picked up the book from in front of his seat. He ran his thumb over the close woven design.

"Everyone ready?" There were a few nods around the room, the twins' wet heads sending drops of water onto the table. Ginny tried to subtly move to the side.

"Where were we?" Harry asked as he thumbed through the pages.

"The car had just exploded." Tonks spoke up worriedly. Harry nodded, found the right page, and began reading.

**I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.**

"Ouch." Ron winced.

**I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow."**

"Close enough." Sirius gave a small smile.

**"Percy!" my mom shouted.**

"Oh good, she's okay."

"What about Grover?" Ginny asked.

**"I'm okay..."**

**I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead. **

"That's always good to know."Fred said.

**The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.**

"A ditch didn't cause that." Remus said, eyes narrowed.

**Lightning. That was the only explanation. **

"What are the odds of that happening?" Harry tried to make it sound like a joke, but instead it came out nervous.

Tonks turned to Remus. "Do you think - ?"

"The gods, most likely." He nodded and his forehead creased in thought.

Hermione was flipping through her book, and the pages fluttered noisily. "Zeus was the god of the skies and here it says that his weapon of choice was lightening." She flipped a page before looking back up at everyone. "He's trying to kill Percy too."

"But why?" Kingsley mused.

No one answered.

**We'd been blasted right off the road. Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump.**

"Grover!" Ginny chewed her nails nervously."Is he ok?"

"Maybe he's just unconscious." Hermione worried

**"Grover!"**

**He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. **

"No!"

**I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!**

Tonks cracked up and we all turned to stare at her like she was crazy.

**Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.**

"He's just like Ron." Ginny smiled sweetly at her older brother.

Ron rolled his eyes, but didn't deny it.

**"Percy," my mother said, "we have to ..." Her voice faltered.**

**I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.**

"Why would he be holding a blanket over his head?" Ron looked up, confused.

"To protect from the rain, perhaps. It could be a tarp." Hermione guessed.

"Wait a second! Isn't that a monster who's chasing them? Why would he care about rain? And why would he look like a regular person?"

"Well, since we are talking Greek myths again, it could be another effect of the mist." Remus

"Well he can't be completely normal." Ginny interrupted.

"Why?" Hermione asked.

"He could keep up with a car at full speed. Whatever he is, he's definitely not human." Ginny explained.

**I swallowed hard. "Who is—"**

**"Percy," my mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."**

"Good idea."

**My mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. **

"Not good."

**I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.**

**"Climb out the passenger's side!" my mother told me. "Percy—you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"**

"What?"

_**"What?"**_

**Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.**

**"That's the property line," my mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."**

"How is a property line supposed to keep them safe?" Sirius asked.

"Wards of some kind, perhaps?" Tonks supposed.

"Wait, " Harry paused, eyes wide. "Isn't she coming too?"

**"Mom, you're coming too."**

**Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.**

"No!"

**"No!" I shouted. "You **_**are **_**coming with me. Help me carry Grover."**

**"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.**

**The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he **_**couldn't **_**be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands—huge meaty hands—were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head ... was his head. And the points that looked like horns …**

**"He doesn't want **_**us**_**," **

"Then why is he chasing you?"

**My mother told me. "He wants **_**you. **_

"Oh, well that makes everything better."

**Besides, I can't cross the property line."**

"Why not? Why would it keep her out and not him?"

"There must be some kind of charm on it."

**"But..."**

**"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."**

"Don't just leave her there! She's going to get killed!" Ginny said, nervously squeezing the handle of her chair.

**I got mad, then**

"Now is not the best time to be angry." Mr. Weasley forehead was creased in worry.

—**mad at my mother**

"Why? She didn't do anything."

"Besides telling him to leave her behind." Hermione added.

**at Grover the goat, **

"Technically he's only half-goat."

Harry shot Hermione a _Really? Right now?_ expression.

**at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.**

Remus's eyes narrowed.

**I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom."**

"Good."

**"I told you—"**

**"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."**

Harry furrowed his brow.

**I didn't wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn't have carried him very far if my mom hadn't come to my aid.**

"Another good reason for her to be there."

**Together, we draped Grover's arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.**

**Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of **_**Muscle Man **_**magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except under wear—**

"What?"

**I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms—**

Fred and George couldn't help but smile. "Who knew monsters went shopping for clothes."

**which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.**

**His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.**

"That has to be one of the weirdest analogies ever."

"Challenge accepted!"

"Oh, now you've done it."

**I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But he couldn't be real.**

Hermione started flipping through her book loudly. "What do you think it is?" Ron asked her quietly. They seemed to be on slightly more civil terms, at least.

"The Minotaur. Half man, half bull."

Ginny swallowed loudly.

"Is he dangerous?"

Hermione gave a pained look. "He was trapped in a maze called the Labyrinth. They used to send people in there and he would kill them, till he was defeated by Theseus."

Ron looked bewildered. "Wait, doesn't that mean its dead?"

"Yes; I don't why its there." She looked confused.

**I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's—"**

**"Pasiphae's son," my mother said.**

"What?"

**"I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."**

"Oh." Mrs. Weasley looked kind of sick.

**"But he's the Min—"**

**"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."**

"A fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself." Harry quoted.

Remus looked off deep in thought. "But perhaps she means they literally have power, though. Like calling attention to themselves."

Harry thought for a moment them shrugged.

**The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.**

"Why is that so important?"

"It could be that property line again."

**I glanced behind me again.**

**The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away. "Food?" Grover moaned.**

"Ron, have you somehow merged with Grover's subconscious?"

"Um, no?"

"Ok, just wondering."

**"Shhh," I told him. "Mom, what's he doing? **

"Didn't he just describe what he was doing?" Ron asked.

Hermione shrugged. "Boys feel the need to say stupid questions."

"Hey!" Half the room yelled indignantly.

"Just because _some _people," Remus gave a pointed look at Sirius, "ask stupid questions doesn't mean you should generalize us all into that category."

"Hey!" Sirius protested. Remus ignored him.

"Maybe you're just missing something." He turned to Harry. "What's the next line?"

**Doesn't he see us?"**

Remus nodded smugly.

**"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."**

**As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.**

_**Not a scratch, **_**I remembered Gabe saying.**

**Oops.**

At this word, everyone started laughing. It was so loud Harry swore the ceiling shoke and dust fell. Or at least dust did fall.

Harry rubbed his glasses on his shirt as everyone laughed. He was still chuckling to himself when he heard a loud THUMP.

Harry jerked straight, but no one appeared to have heard it. More dust swirled down from the ceiling.

"What was that?"

"What was what?" Sirius asked.

"That loud thumping noise!"

"Did I mention we are keeping Buckbeak upstairs?" He said, rather casually. It took Harry a moment to absorb that.

"Why-I mean-" Harry shook his head to clear his thoughts. "How does he even fit?"

"Mooney here," Sirius grinned at his friend, "did some obscure charm and _Viola!, _ Buckbeak."

Remus raised an eyebrow. "It was _a bit_ more complicated than that, but sure, why not?"

Harry chuckled again to himself. Note to self: Visit Buckbeak when finished reading.

**"Percy," my mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. **

"That much is obvious."

**Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way— directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"**

"How does she know all this?" Sirius asked.

"She's obviously been preparing ahead of time. She must know about the gods."

"Perhaps Percy's father told her." Remus suggested.

"I have a question." Tonks said suddenly. "Why hasn't Percy father, if he is a god, done anything to help them?" She looked curiously around the room.

"That is a very good question indeed." Mr. Weasley agreed when no one answered.

**"How do you know all this?"**

**"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me."**

"It's never selfish to want to be near your child." Mrs. Weasley said sadly.

**"Keeping me near you? But—"**

**Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.**

"Wait, are they uphill or downhill?" Ron said confusedly.

"They're trying to get uphill, so I'd guess that's where they are." Kingsley explained.

**He'd smelled us.**

**The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn't getting any lighter.**

**The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.**

Ginny bit her nails.

**My mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Separate! Remember what I said."**

**I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only chance. I sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on me. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.**

**He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest.**

Harry's stomach flipped.

**The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn't work. I could never outrun this thing.**

**So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side.**

Mrs. Weasley let out a sigh of relief.

**The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me this time, toward my mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.**

"No!" Ginny gasped and Harry hurriedly continued the book.

**We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.**

"But what about the property line? Didn't she say he just had to make it to the property line?" Hermione said, sounding hopeful and desperate.

**The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.**

"She's so selfless." Tonks whispered to herself.

**"Run, Percy!" she told me. "I can't go any farther. Run!"**

Their eyes grew as wide as saucers, staring impatiently at Harry to continue the story.

**But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. **

"She's got to – she can't die right?" Hermione whispered in disbelief and worry.

**She tried to sidestep, as she'd told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. **

"Not good, not good." Fred bit his lip.

**His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.**

No one dared interrupt Harry, refusing to believe that she was going to die.

**"Mom!"**

**She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"**

**Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother's neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply ... gone.**

Harry felt himself almost zone out of his body and everything felt weirdly out of focus. This had probably happened a long time ago, but nothing really lessened the pain of losing someone you care about. He hadn't even _met_ Sally Jackson, but he envisioned his own mother to be something like her. It just hit too close to home.

Harry could dimly hear shouts of "No!" and "She can't die!" and even saw a teardrop or two. Like she was a character in a story, he thought savagely, and he instantly regretted it. Because they didn't _know _what it felt like. To lose a parent. Even he couldn't fully appreciate that, he thought, because he couldn't even remember them in the first place, except for their final terrible moments. Harry felt his heart ache and decided not to dwell on that for too long. To Percy, the loss was probably even greater, as Sally was the one who had raised him, protected, loved and nurtured his whole life. The one person he could always count on.

**"No!"**

**Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs—the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mrs. Dodds grew talons.**

"Adrenaline." Remus said quietly, brooding over Sally's death. Harry belatedly remembered that Remus had lost people too.

**The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.**

The tension returned with new force. There was still other lives at sake. And Grover wasn't even conscious.

**I couldn't allow that.**

Harry smiled faintly. Even after his terrible loss, Percy refused to abandon his friend.

**I stripped off my red rain jacket.**

**"Hey!" I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"**

The twins muffled a chuckle. "Percy has good taunts."

**"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.**

"Apparently he thinks so too."

**I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all.**

Hermione raised an eyebrow at Harry as he read this. "He _does_ sound like you."

"They all worked, didn't they?" He smiled slightly.

**I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I'd jump out of the way at the last moment.**

"That's what got his mom. Wouldn't it know what he's trying by now?" Ginny asked fearfully.

Harry realized she was right and dull fear settled again in his stomach.

**But it didn't happen like that.**

Hermione gulped.

**The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.**

**Time slowed down.**

**My legs tensed. I couldn't jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.**

"What just happened?" Ron asked, stunned.

"How….?" Tonks trailed off, looking amazed.

Kingsley looked pensive. "Another instinct perhaps." We gave him questioning looks. "Remember? At the museum? How he killed Mrs. Dodds?"

Vaguely, Harry, nodded. "I remembering him saying it was natural to swing the sword."

"In born battle reflexes?" Remus pondered.

Harry continued with the story.

**How did I do that?**

"Even he doesn't know." Ginny said.

**I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.**

Tonks hissed in sympathy.

**The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.**

"Gross."Ginny wrinkled her nose.

"Question." Sirius proposed suddenly. "Is the monster already dead and he's rotting?"

"He's still moving Sirius." Tonks said slowly, like talking to a small child.

"I know that!" Sirius snapped. Then he slumped as if exhausted by yelling at Tonks. "What if it is like a zombie or undead people? What if someone put a spell on it, and brought it back to life, but it's not really living?"

Remus looked surprised. "Good theory, Padfoot. But why would someone bring the Minotaur back to life?"

Kingsley chuckled darkly. "Well, the king of the gods wants Percy dead, remember? He can probably do anything he'd like."

Harry felt a chill when he realized just how much influence a god had over their lives. He could kill him at any time.

**The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.**

"Good, form a plan." Ginny nodded approvingly.

**Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I'd bite my own tongue off.**

"Ouch." Ron winced.

**"Food!" Grover moaned.**

"Why doesn't he shut up? Now the monster will come after him!" Hermione worried.

**The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her disappear in a flash of light,** **and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—**_**snap!**_

"Did he just break off a bull's horn with his bare hands?" Sirius asked in disbelief.

"Wow." Kingsley said, sounding impressed and he _never_ sounded impressed.

**The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.**

"He's going to kill the Minotaur with his own horn." Harry whispered in realization. He couldn't believe it.

**The monster charged.**

**Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.**

"How can he do this all without thinking?" Harry asked, frustrated. His life might be so much easier if had Percy's reflexes. Cedric might not have died.

"It might be his demigod instincts again, or something similar." Remus proposed.

**The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.**

"Wait!" Hermione practically shouted. She sounded hysterical. Everyone turned to stare at her.

She stares back, her eyes alight. "Humans don't die in a flash of light! What if, what if Sally is alive?" She sounds like she is trying not to hope but can't help it.

"Where would she have gone, then?" Remus sounds reluctant, but Harry can tell he is warming to the idea.

"I'm not sure yet." Hermione says, but she remains hopeful.

Almost unwillingly, Harry can feel hope growing inside, threatening to overcome him entirely.

**The monster was gone.**

**The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. **

"He must have hit his head pretty hard."

**I was weak and scared and trembling with grief. I'd just seen my mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, **

Harry's hope flickered. Percy still thought his mother was dead. Others looked on sympathetically.

**but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farm house. **

"He's so caring about his friends." Tonks smiled quietly in admiration.

**I was crying, calling for my mother, **

Harry sucked in a breath. Percy was in denial about his mother. He didn't blame him.

**but I held on to Grover—I wasn't going to let him go.**

**The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's.**

Why would the bearded man be familiar?

**They both looked down at me, and the girl said, "He's the one. He must be."**

"What does _that_ mean?" Ginny asked.

"She might really like him." George gave a smirking grin.

Tonks rolled her eyes. "Not like that, it sounded….more _essential_ than admiring. Plus they're like, twelve, George."

**"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious. Bring him inside."**

**A/N: If anyone cares, I started another PJO/HP story. Not a reading the books. Its one of my best, in my own modest opinion. Its called **_**The Prophecy Keeper**_**. Ominous, eh? Its centered on Rachel. Better than it sounds. Read it if you want.**

**As always, REVIEW!**

**Signing out,**

**-Dov5e**


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